Catherine, thank you very much for your interest in the Zhana Ayupova "Sleeping Beauty" video. It would be great to be able to see the entire performance.

I very much enjoy reading you excellent, excellent reviews.

Do you know anything about plans for the winter Mariinsky Festival for the next two years? It seems that they are already planning to perform in another country next March, since the theater will be closed for repairs. This would leave Festival goers like myself homeless for those two weeks. If you could also put in a good word for having the Festival next year in another Saint Petersburg building, it would be wonderful of you.

No word has been given regarding any of the Mariinsky's annual festivals for the duration of the theatre closure, so I can't say one way or another. The dancers (and others involved) are mostly concerned about where they will perform and rehearse in the city when not on the road, as that question has been only vaguely addressed by the Mariinsky Administration.

Rest assured as soon as I have any information on that, I will post it here. As you noted, the company will be in Israel for March 9-29, 2007 and at Kennedy Center in early January 2007. They have said that the reserve troupe will remain in St Petersburg and perform here (as they usually do when the others are out of town). But with different performing venues, it is anyone's guess what the ultimate result will be.

Actually I have to confess to a soft spot for Anastasia Volochkova, whatever her faults she managed to put ballet onto the front pages of the world, even if for all the wrong reasons and I actually appreciate the occasional larger than life personality. They say there is no such thing as bad publicity and in Volochkova’s case that is probably true. Throughout her career she has shown flashes of brilliance but that has been marred by her love of celebrity and self-publicity over and above her dancing. Sorry, Fedora but I find the first couple of pictures you posted quite hideous. I actually prefer her slightly overweight to appearing like a bag of bones. Volochkova is an incredibly beautiful woman and I think her kind of glamour is good for the art of dance; it’s just a shame she doesn’t take her dancing more seriously. By the way, Volochkova became a mother not long ago and I recently saw a picture of her with her child in a Russian magazine. Her baby is just gorgeous and her mum had dressed her in a cute little pink tutu. After her recent problems I was very happy to see Volochkova looking so content.

The Russian review of Vishneva’s Swan Lake makes the interesting point that Muscovites like to see strong personalities on stage, and Vishneva is a very strong personality, far more so than any of her increasingly insipid Kirov colleagues. Has the Kirov cold-shouldered her? Difficult to say, as she has probably performed abroad as a guest more often than her colleagues and I suspect a chicken and egg scenario here as we wonder if her apparent neglect by the Kirov management was because she was abroad or whether it was lack of opportunity in St Petersburg that drove her away in the first place. Personally I like Vishneva’s bold style though I see her more as a neo classicist than a purely classical dancer. The Odile photograph was worrying though. I’ve never seen anything like that in Swan Lake in my life!

That's quite a detailed, mostly negative review of her, to say nothing of the picture. This critic, Tatiana Kuznetsova, is apparently well-versed in the choreography, which isn't always the case. For those who don't read Russian, I here translate excerpts:

"Everyone awaited the 'white act' and the wait was not in vain ... She of course, was not a Swan Queen.. She was also no swan, removing the poignant shakes of the head over the 'wing', [and replacing them] with nervously waving arms and other decorative parts. She did not completely kill pity, expressing fragile defenselessness, but she did not depict love, [which was] suddenly detected nearby in her nervous male counterpart...

"Several low dips in her torso during the adagio cut into one's line of sight, ... [and] they opposed the haughty vertical of her torso, which turned every attitude into a challenge. In the trembling hands of her Kiev prince, the Petersburg pirouettes were uncertain ..."

Mlle. Vishneva's foot IS sickled. What does that tell you about her BACK?

But who knows, or cares, at the Maryinskii today?

Someone knows, yesindeedie, but not only is NOTHING being done about this sort of thing, IT IS GETTING WORSE.

The MEN are starting to do it!

DO NOT IMITATE THE DECADENT WEST!

Anyway, Vladimir Putin has a lot on his plate on the moment, what with Western Europe in its usual Lemmings-rushing-to-the-Sea mode that we know so well from the 1930s ... notably 1933 and thereabouts ....

but

WHEN Putin has some leisure, I would very much like him to get round to sorting out the Maryinskii and its School.

A simple and effective approach, for starters: We tie an alarm signal to people's leg in class. The moment they raise it above 120 degrees, a siren howls.

With the major ballet companies, museums such as the Hermitage, 19th and first half 20th C. composers and the great 19th Century authors, there is a strong case to be made that Russia is no.1 in the the field "artistic museum".

For current arts, or artistic creation over the past 50 years, I suspect it is nowhere near no.1.

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